SSD

Ever since Intel announced Thunderbolt and made it exclusively available to Macs, Windows users have been wondering if they are missing out. The truth is: yes, they are, big-time. I've been working with the first Thunderbolt storage device, the Pegasus R6 from Promise, and find it to be the fastest consumer-grade storage device out there, period. (Stay tuned for my full review, coming up soon.)

On the other hand, since Macs generally don't support USB 3.0, which has been out for a long time and is becoming more and more popular in the PC world, Mac users have also been missing out quite a bit. Many people are wondering which is better, Thunderbolt or USB 3.0. This is a hard question, as Thunderbolt is about more than data storage; it's also about video transport, connectivity, expandability, and synced audio. However, strictly in terms of storage applications, neither is better. Consumers should really have both. The current separation of the two standards is a lose-lose situation for Windows and Mac users alike. … Read more

Your iMac is running out of peripheral ports, and you still want to add an external hard drive and a few other devices to it? Iomega has something for you.

The company introduced today its first external hard drive, called Iomega Mac Companion Hard Drive, that also comes with two USB ports that you can plug your iOS-based devices into to charge and sync with the Mac. The ports can also be used with other USB devices, such as printers or other external storage devices.

Basically, the Iomega Mac Companion Hard Drive is an external desktop hard drive that also … Read more

A year ago, Trendnet released the first single-band router that offers the new 3-by-3 450Mbps Wireless-N standard on the 2.4GHz band, the TEW-691GR.

The company recently did that again by introducing the first router, TEW-692GR, that offers this new higher Wireless-N speed on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands simultaneously.

And the router is now still the only one on the market that offers this feature. However, being cutting edge doesn't mean it offers the best performance. In our testing, the performance of its 2.4GHz band could use some improvement, even when coupled with 450Mbps wireless clients.

This isn't necessarily the router's fault, however, as the 2.4GHz band is generally very crowded with lots of interference, which is somewhat the state of CNET's Wi-Fi test facility. Nonetheless, comparatively, we expected more. … Read more

Via Labs announced today its latest USB 3.0 controller, the VL751 SuperSpeed USB to NAND flash controller. This is the company's second-generation single-chip solution for USB 3.0 flash-based portable storage devices.

Via Labs says that the new VL751 controller features a four-channel NAND interface, capable of doubling or even quadrupling maximum throughput over single- or dual-channel designs. It offers improved parallelization and higher efficiency by means of integrated preread and prewrite buffers. And it boasts better support for flash memory. These enhancements translate into a nearly 100 percent performance boost over the previous model without increased power … Read more

Of all SATA 3-based solid-state drives (SSDs) CNET has reviewed, the Patriot WildFire offers the wildest performance.

On the one hand, it didn't excel in file-transferring tests where we time how long a drive takes to copy files from one place to another. But on the other, it did much better with application performance than its peers. This singles the drive out from the rest and means that when used as the main drive that hosts an operating system and applications, the WildFire increases the overall performance by reducing the time needed for an application to load and finish … Read more

Solid-state drive prices continue to fall, and SanDisk is doing its part with a new 240GB laptop drive for $450. But don't expect to pay that kind of price when getting an SSD directly from Apple or Hewlett-Packard.

Flash memory-based SSDs are the storage of choice in cutting-edge, weight-sensitive designs. They're standard in all the new 2011 MacBook Airs and will populate the new wave of Ultrabooks due later this year. Drives of 256GB capacity from first-tier suppliers such as Micron Technology were more than $500 earlier this year, so a new drive from SanDisk with comparable capacity … Read more

Last October, Apple's 11-inch MacBook Air debuted. The tiny, slim ultraportable was the smallest laptop Apple had ever made. Its combination of size and power earned it a four-star review, with caveats: it had a last-generation Core 2 Duo processor, lacked a backlit keyboard, and omitted an SD card slot. We're glad to find the newly released, back-to-school-timed 2011 MacBook Air update fixes two of our three complaints, while keeping a $999 starting price.

Both 11- and 13-inch MacBook Airs have been updated with new, faster second-gen Core i5 processors. The new Air also, finally, has a backlit … Read more

The latest MacBook Air laptops are here, and as was widely expected, they include not only Intel's current second-generation Core i-series processors, but also the same Thunderbolt port found on the latest MacBook Pro and iMac systems.

Even better, both the new 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air laptops have backlit keyboards, the No. 2 most-requested new feature in a recent CNET poll.

Seagate announced today that it's now shipping the Pulsar XT.2 solid-state drive (SSD). This is one of two enterprise SSDs that were unveiled back in March. The second drive is the Pulsar.2 that will also be available for purchase by the end of this month.

The Pulsar XT.2 SSD is the company's flagship solid-state solution for enterprise. Seagate says the drive combines single-level cell flash with a native 6GB/s serial-attached SCSI (SAS) interface and is the fastest internal storage drive in Seagate's portfolio.

The drive comes in the traditional 2.5-inch design and … Read more